


Idée Fixe

by prudencepaccard



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Backstory, Canon Compliant, Chekhov's Gun, Clothing, Dreams, Gen, Knitting, Literary References & Allusions, Missing Scene, Prison, Sleep, Slice of Life, Toulon Era, explanation of a minor detail
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-05-29
Packaged: 2018-04-01 19:19:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4031542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prudencepaccard/pseuds/prudencepaccard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Majorly Minor Characters week: all the questions you (never) asked about Brevet’s suspender(s), answered!</p><p>“Throughout this hideous meditation, the thoughts which we have above indicated moved incessantly through his brain; entered, withdrew, re-entered, and in a manner oppressed him; and then he thought, also, without knowing why, and with the mechanical persistence of revery, of a convict named Brevet, whom he had known in the galleys, and whose trousers had been upheld by a single suspender of knitted cotton. The checkered pattern of that suspender recurred incessantly to his mind.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Idée Fixe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PilferingApples](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PilferingApples/gifts).



I.

 _I don’t belong here,_  Brevet said to himself,  _but I am here. And while I am here I shall thrive._

It was what he had been repeating to himself ever since his arrival in the “pasture” six years ago. Seen from Bicêtre, Toulon had only been an abstraction; even under the orange trees of Ollioules, the penultimate stop of the chain’s journey, he had found it hard to believe he was truly headed _there._

But now  _there_  was  _here,_  and would be for many years to come; he had only served one-half of his sentence. The state did not look kindly on civil servants who embezzled. He wished he had not been arrested at forty; this was a terrible age to be a newcomer in the  _bagne_.

Brevet was an adaptable man. Born into the smallest of the  _petite bourgeoisie_ , there was nothing he could not get used to if it meant comfort and stability. Some men thirst for power, others for money; he wished for a good reputation, for decency, for good favor. There are some things, however, to which even the most cooperative and accommodating man cannot adjust, and clothes coming apart at the seams is one of them.  

He’d done his level best to keep his uniform in good condition, but after half a dozen years of constant use, it was disintegrating: one sleeve was coming detached from the  _casaque,_  the vest underneath had lost most of its buttons, and the buttonholes on the right trouser leg, where he wore his chain, were all completely shredded.  Unsure of whether he was more likely to be punished for troubling the guards about it, or for failing to bring the situation to the attention of the House, he passed his days torn between he desire for new clothes and his fear he would be held responsible for their condition.

“Just ask for the goddamn clothes,” his chainmate, an old Republican named Groussard, told him in one of his rare moments of lucidity. “It can’t hurt. They won’t punish you if you ask politely.”

“Easy to say! How can you know that?”

“All right, maybe they’ll give you a whack. But how bad is that, compared to the possibility of getting clothes that aren’t falling apart? If Pascal’s Wager made half as much sense, I’d be a Christian.”

Brevet didn’t know how to explain to the old man, a Hébertiste who had spent much of his adult life fighting authority for anti-authority’s sake, that it wasn’t the physical punishment he feared so much as being seen as a troublemaker.

“The idea puts me ill at ease,” he said, repeating an expression he found himself using often.

Groussard snorted. “Listen, it’s your problem. I wouldn’t care if it weren’t for the fact that you won’t stop complaining about your goddamn rags. Either grow a backbone or keep silent.”

Brevet glared at him, but took his words to heart and said no more about it. Groussard ended up forcing the issue nevertheless, when a few weeks later Brevet’s chain tangled in the gaping rent in his trouser leg, causing Brevet to trip and fall and Groussard to tumble down with him.

“That’s  _enough!_ ” said Groussard, after he’d checked himself for broken bones. “If you won’t say something, I will! Excuse me, guards!”

Immediately, a  _garde-chiourme_  and his cudgel loomed into view. Brevet scrambled up, yanking his cap off his head, but Groussard and his  _bonnet_ stayed put.

“What’s the meaning of this?” the guard demanded.

Brevet stammered out a few attempts at an explanation before Groussard answered for him: “His clothes’re falling to pieces, that’s what’s happening!”

The silence broken, Brevet found his voice.  "I can’t help it, it’s been six years since I was issued my uniform.“ He held out his red  _bonnet_  so the guard could take his number. "Some of the damage I’ve tried to repair, but the trousers are just too far gone—”

The guard shook his head. “Ridiculous! The state offers to house, feed and clothe you, and you won’t even take advantage of it! You’re supposed to say when you need new clothes, you imbecile. It’s not our responsibility to notice such things.” He dropped the cap back into Brevet’s hand. “What items need replacing?”

“The trousers primarily, but the  _casaque_ could be repaired, and the vest just needs—”

“Oh for heaven’s sake, what a bore you are! You’re more full of lists than Rabelais. Get back to work. You’ll receive all new clothes, except for the _bonnet_ ; expect them this evening.”

“Thank you,” said Brevet.

“Don’t thank me,” the guard said curtly. “Thank the administration that spends money on your sorry ass.”

II.

Back in the  _salle,_  after food and wine had been distributed and digested but before the guards came around to chain everyone down for the night, a  _payot_ came by Brevet’s portion of the communal plank bed and called his number.

“I am he,” said Brevet, starting to remove his cap out of habit and then remembering that he was only speaking to a fellow convict. Not all authority was the same.

“I’m supposed to give you these,” said the  _payot_ , gesturing at a neatly folded red and yellow bundle. “But I need the ones you have on.”

It was not without a certain perverse nostalgia that Brevet undressed, set aside the little money he kept in his vest, and handed over the clothes he had worn for the past six years. An odd feeling, a bittersweet mixture of the joy of new things and the sadness that the new things looked like this, welled up in him. Soon, however, his anticipation turned to worry: everything was at least a size too large. “Hey,” he called back to the  _payot_ , who had started to leave. “I think this stuff’s too big.”

The payot shrugged. “It’s what they had. You’ll have to make do.”

With a sigh, Brevet unbuttoned the right leg and pulled the trousers on. They would not stay up. Cursing his chainmate for interfering, and the House for failing to give him clothes that fit, he tried on the  _casaque_. It was a bit baggy, but not as large as it had looked. And at least it stayed on. There, he could “make do.” But the trousers…

“God damn it,” he said, “Who died and left me this shit?”

Groussard began to laugh.

“You shut the hell up, you meddling bastard!” said Brevet. “This is your fault, anyhow.” He clenched the extra fabric in both hands. “I need to hold these up somehow. They don’t sell suspenders, do they? I need to make them. Fuck.” Peering under the plank bed, he assessed which supplies he had left: an almost-empty spool of thread, a crochet hook, sewing and darning needles. No materials to work with. Nothing he could use—unless—

“Hey, Cochepaille?” Brevet asked the young lifer about ten beds down who always seemed to be knitting socks. It wasn’t clear whether they were for himself, for someone else, or if he made money from them; but his hands were always busy.

“Yeah?”

“Got any extra yarn?”

“Just a little. Not enough for anything.”

“We’ll see. What’ve you got exactly?”

Cochepaille showed him two very small balls of cotton yarn, one white and one black and each about the size of a fig.

“Can I buy those off you?” asked Brevet, climbing down from the planks and going as far as the chain fastening him to Groussard would allow. “I’ll take them.” He rummaged in his new vest and took out what he felt was a reasonable sum. “And can I rent your needles too?”

Cochepaille shrugged. “Yeah, whatever you say.” He tossed the yarn to Brevet without warning him; Brevet caught one ball but had to retrieve the other from someone else’s bed. “And the needles,” he added, but these he allowed Brevet to reach out and grab.

Back on his bed, Brevet began the project of knitting something to hold his trousers up. He would sacrifice buttons from the vest and use them to fasten the suspenders; he had a needle and thread. The real question was, would they do the job? He realized that Cochepaille had certainly been right that there was not enough yarn for socks; there might not even be enough for two suspenders.

“Well then, I’ll knit one,” he said to himself. “I’ll look a damn fool, but not as much as I would with my trousers falling down.” He began to unwind the little balls of yarn. Black and white. He would need to use both. Should he just use one color until he ran out, then switch to the next? He was put in mind of the preface to the third book in  _The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel_ : “I remember nevertheless to have read, that Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, one day, amongst the many spoils and booties by which his victories he had acquired, presenting to the Egyptians, in the open view of the people, a Bactrian camel all black, and a parti-colored slave, in such sort as that the one half of his body was black and the other white, not in partition of breadth but by the diaphragma…”

God, Rabelais again. He didn’t even like Rabelais. Just stupid sex jokes. Who needs fantastical grotesquerie, after all, when one is  _living_  among the lowliest and dirtiest of bodies? No, it would not do to make parti-colored suspenders.  He needed to impose some order, some regularity onto this yarn. A pattern was necessary. What pattern would allow him to alternate black and white with order and regularity? Stripes? Perhaps. Or checks? Yes, that would do. He would make himself a wearable checkerboard, and he would never lose the game. Let everyone else battle it out; he was just the board.

III.

As often happened, Valjean couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t because the bed was hard; he was used to it. It wasn’t because of the heat; he was used to that too. It was because of the thoughts in his head. They were too much. When his head was too full, his eyes couldn’t close. It was a mechanical defect.

Another convict’s back was in his field of vision. The one who was a suckup. They slept nearby, but they didn’t speak; Valjean never spoke with anyone.

It was summer, and everyone was stripping down. The suckup with his back to Valjean had removed his  _casaque_  and vest; the shirt underneath was gray in the half-light of the  _salle_. Valjean could not see color, only light and dark. The single suspender he used to hold up his trousers was checkered, alternating squares of black and white.

Valjean’s thoughts were also of no particular color, only light and dark. Everything tormented him equally. Alternating thoughts of black and white, an existence that was only gray in this light.

When Valjean at last fell asleep, he dreamed of the moonlight in the  _salle_ , the darkness of the  _cachot_ , and a world of endless shadows.


End file.
